Not This Time
by T.S. Blue
Summary: Luke knows it's inevitable... but not today.


_This has got to be the shortest bit of prose I have ever written, and even I don't quite know what it is. It doesn't fit with canon events, or even within my own little universe. It just sort of happened._

_Recipe to cure writer's block:  
Realize that you've got nothing brewing  
Announce that you are done  
Give up  
Words will come._

_Cheers!_

* * *

Whenever they could cajole one of their guardians into bringing them to town, the boys would scoop together the small change that they'd managed to save from their birthday money and the tiniest remainder of their weekly allowance after they'd tossed most of it into the collection basket at church. Their aunt or uncle would leave them off at the movie theater, where for one afternoon, their world was transformed. Westerns were their favorites, and luckily for the young Duke cousins, they were just about the only things that were ever shown at the Hazzard Theater. The antiheroes played by Roy Rogers, James Arness and Lee Marvin were almost more real to Bo and Luke than the teachers in their classrooms or the sheriff that tutted after them whenever they passed in front of the county courthouse.

Luke watched how the men with white hats managed to outwit the various villains that tried to disrupt the ways of pioneer life. He decided that cowboys had to be much more intelligent than anyone gave them credit for. And as he watched the dusty red and yellow western scenery pass across a screen that was wider than Dukes' biggest barn, Luke yearned to explore the world outside Hazzard, maybe even beyond the borders of his beloved state of Georgia.

Bo, the older boy learned during post-show discussions held while sitting on the curb, awaiting their ride home with chins resting on dirty knees, didn't even seem to see the cliffs or endless western skies in the films. For the little blonde boy, the heroes filled the screen, allowing no other image to pass. James Garner's Jess Remsberg, saving the damsel in distress, or Gregory Peck's McKenna, leading the way into a canyon of gold, held the younger boy rapt with their fearlessness, their willingness to leap into action to save another.

Garner and Peck were okay, but from the way those indigo eyes sparkled in the late afternoon sun, Luke learned that the one his little cousin truly idolized was John Wayne: the Duke. The two boys joked about how their surname and their hero's nickname were one and the same.

Before he grew to be a teenager, Luke came to recognize that John Wayne was not Bo's biggest hero. It had been slow in dawning on him, even though he'd seen the drawings that Bo brought home from school, in which a boy with dark curls figured most prominently, and read the simple essays the younger boy had written for homework in which the name "Luke" was mentioned almost more often than the word "the." One day, though, the tow-headed boy had fallen off a fence post, a place he never should have climbed to anyway. The wind had been knocked completely from Bo's lungs, and Luke had watched as the abject fear in the little boy's eyes turned to trust, when the blonde realized that his big cousin was at his side, soothing him.

"Relax, Bo. You can breathe, cousin, but you have to relax first." And then, suddenly, Bo was breathing as if he'd never stopped.

Seeing that all he had to do was say something and Bo would believe it, was really powerful to Luke. There were times when he found his little cousin annoying, but mostly he cherished the fact that Bo thought he knew, and could do, everything on the planet.

When it happened, Luke couldn't believe he hadn't seen it coming. He was supposed to be the smart one. He should have realized that one day, Bo would test him beyond his limits and despite his best efforts, he would end up letting his cousin down. Unlike the movie Duke, the young farm boys' lives were not scripted, and there was bound to come the enemy that Luke couldn't beat, the situation he couldn't think their way out of. They'd fought a thousand battles, side by side, from the death of their aunt to helping their uncle with the "family business" to traditional schoolyard scuffles. Through it all, somehow Luke had always been able to stand tall for his little cousin.

But today was different. Seeing the gun pointed at the blonde's chest froze Luke solid. Fists, he could handle, but a weapon could go off in a heartbeat, and the sheriff's finger was resting right on the trigger. Pushing up his Stetson hat, the cop spoke.

"Now, Bo Duke, don't you move. You're under arrest."

The older boy's stomach dropped and his mouth went dry with the realization that his cousin was caught, staring down the wrong end of a revolver, and there was nothing Luke could do. He'd only walked away for a moment, leaving Bo with the 'shine while he put away the last of the unused bottles for another day. And now Bo was at gunpoint, presumably on his way to jail, and there was no way the brunette could stop it from happening. For all that the youngster had looked up to him, Luke was no hero, not like the ones in the movies, anyway. He was about to let the teenager down.

And then something inside him asserted itself. _Not this time,_ he thought. _Not today._

Carefully but deliberately, he moved until he was between Bo and the gun.

"It ain't him you want Rosco, it's me." His hands were up, his voice quiet but firm. As the cuffs were placed on Luke's wrists, he heard Bo protesting. But the gun was holstered and the blonde was free to go. Luke stood tall, like the Duke he was, as the sheriff prodded him into the back seat of the waiting cruiser.


End file.
